ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Riley Greene, for the first time in his young career, slugged a pair of home runs in a game and powered the Tigers to a 4-2 come-from-behind win over the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field Tuesday night.

Greene’s 426-foot solo home run to dead center field in the third inning was the extent of the Tigers’ offense until the eighth inning.

But down 2-1, Greene stepped in against lefty reliever Colin Poche. Catcher Carson Kelly singled to start the inning and Greene, who is the major league leader in walks (21), was in ambush mode. He locked onto a first-pitch four-seam fastball (90 mph) and smoked it, 408 feet into the seats in right.

One batter later, Mark Canha, who homered on Monday, went down and launched a low breaking ball into the seats in left. Greene (6) and Canha (5) are your Tigers’ home run leaders. Their blasts countered a two-run homer by former Tiger Isaac Paredes off reliever Alex Faedo in the bottom of the sixth.

The Tigers (14-10) are now 10-3 on the road and unbeaten in five straight road series to start the season. That hasn’t happened since 2007.

The other highlight for the Tigers was the return to form of veteran right-hander Kenta Maeda, who came in with an ERA pushing 8.

You knew things might be different for him, though, when he walked out with high socks on for the first time this season. He was a man out to change his fortunes and he didn’t care what it took.

You also knew things were different when his second pitch of his outing was a sinker. He hadn’t thrown that pitch since last season. Not once had he used it with the Tigers. And for sure it was going to be a different night his first 12 pitches were strikes.

Maeda rebounded nicely from his worst outing of the season, where he was tagged for six runs (five earned) by the Rangers in 2 2/3 innings with a less-than-stellar 55% strike rate, blanking the Rays on three singles over five innings.

He was in command, he was creative and he was impervious to three potentially costly errors made behind him. He had to essentially get five outs in the first inning after an error by shortstop Javier Báez and a catcher’s interference on Carson Kelly put two on with no outs.

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